Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?
Interpretation
Justice requires a social context to exist; it cannot be defined in isolation.
This quote by Thomas Sowell suggests that the concept of justice is not an individualistic ideal but one that is fundamentally rooted in social interactions. Without a society or community, the notions of right and wrong, just and unjust become meaningless as they rely on social relationships and shared values for their definition and application.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of community in defining justice.
Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.
Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.
Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.
Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.
If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
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